Boardwalktech releases new ERP solution

As more corporate oversight is being placed on supply chain imperatives, solutions providers are creating more transparent forecasting tools.

According to spokesmen for Boardwalktech, a provider of collaboration solutions for global enterprises, the announcement of a new version of its Boardwalk Collaboration Platform (BCP) coincides with new market trends.

"There has definately been a move toward keeping C-level executives in the loop across management disciplines," said J.B. Kuppe, vice president of marketing, Boardwalktech. "Fortunately, our technology is moving in the same direction toward transparency."

Company spokesmen also noted that the enhanced solution will help global manufacturers work more collaboratively with trading partners while driving faster—and more profitable—product-planning decisions.

Global manufacturers have long struggled with the need to set up a collaborative planning environment. The primary challenge is that manufacturers and their partners—of which there can be dozens or even hundreds at any given time including end customers, distributors, retailers, suppliers and manufacturing partners—all need fast and easy access to large sets of rapidly changing planning data such as sales forecasts, promotions, production plans and supply commits.

According to Kuppe, the high-tech and pharma markets are well poised to take advantage of this development.

"Although we did not anticipate an uptick in these sectors, it fits in well with our strategy," he told SCMR in an interview.

He explained that traditional ERP systems and point solutions are not flexible, fast or easy enough to use for anything but basic transactions like processing a purchase order, so extending them to manage highly collaborative applications like promotions, demand planning or production planning just doesn’t work.

"Without a solution, manufacturers cannot confidently predict revenues and margins; inventory buffers at all points in the supply chain expand as will the associated carrying costs; resource allocation and product lead times cannot be effectively managed which means customer satisfaction goes down; and perishable demand is lost to competition," added spokesmen.

The release also extends BCP’s cloud-based access control capabilities, which lets companies manage what rows and columns users see, to include new capabilities for managing how much data and what type of data is active in a given collaboration between multiple users and systems.

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